The only people in the square in front of Al-Hoceima prison at eight in the morning were three human rights workers, leaning against a van. Fifteen minutes later a plainclothes policeman arrived and sat on some steps, keeping his eyes on the activists. At 9.30 the prison doors finally opened and four young men walked out. They were arrested on 11 March in the village of Imzouren, about 25km away, during a peaceful demonstration against earlier police violence in a neighbouring village, Ait Bouayach. They spent months sharing a 20-bed cell with 25 other prisoners.

Because of the police presence we had to wait to talk to the freed men, and then one of them, Mohamed B, a French citizen whose parents were Moroccan, told us he hadn’t been involved in the demonstration: “I’m a plumber in Nîmes, and I hadn’t set foot in Morocco for six years. My wife is from Imzouren and we came to visit her family. The police just attacked me arbitrarily. The judge wasn’t interested and the French consul didn’t help. Now I just want to get back to France with my wife as quickly as possible.”

Back in France, President François Hollande had, soon after his election, received Morocco’s King Mohamed VI at the Elysée and praised “the process of democratic, economic and social reforms under way in the kingdom at the king’s initiative.”

Several days later we met the other three men in the office of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH). “The protest was completely peaceful,” said Mohamed D, 20, from a village near Imzouren. “Then, suddenly, 10 policemen laid into me. First they beat me in the street with their truncheons. Then they threw me into a police van and started beating me again. Every time a police patrol passed, they invited them in to hit me. They insulted me, saying my dad was a Spaniard [and by implication, his mother a prostitute]. It got worse at the police station. One big policeman put all his weight on my knee, while some others held my leg off the ground. That went on for at least two hours. I fainted. An ambulance took me to hospital, where I spent two days handcuffed to the bed, with no food. The doctor only came to insult me. Then I was taken back to the police station. They wanted me to sign a statement saying I had hit a policeman and he had lost an eye. When I refused, they started to hit me again. When I went before the judge two days later I wanted to show him my bruises, but he refused and told me: ‘If you want to make a complaint, this is not the place’.”

The others told similar stories. Mehdi A, 21, endured two days of beatings at Imzouren police station. “They kept insulting Moulay Mohand, calling him a dirty traitor [see Morocco’s other country], and saying they could destroy the whole of the Rif in two hours if they wanted to, and make soap out of our dead bodies, like the Nazis did with the Jews at Auschwitz.”

The Moroccan authorities have used violence to deal with the popular uprising that began in January 2011, after the fall of Tunisia’s former president Ben Ali. There was a call on Facebook to protest in every town in Morocco on 20 February 2011, and the protest in Al-Hoceima attracted about 30,000 out of a population of 60,000. The February 20 Movement (M20F) was made up of new activists, the powerful “unemployed graduates” network (set up in 1991), student unions, and old leftwing activists who had been jailed by the late king Hassan II and are often involved in AMDH.

After that there were demonstrations every Sunday across the country, with protestors updating their slogans to reflect current events. Their chants usually referred to justice (against police brutality), dignity (the right to work, health care, an end to corruption) and social equality (fair distribution of wealth, cheaper rent, electricity and basic foodstuffs).

A king like in Spain

Did they ever refer to the king? “Never directly,” said Jawad S, 26, a technician we met with 10 of his friends at a café in Ait Bouayach, on the Monday after the regular Sunday protest in which 200 men took part. (A few female unemployed graduates later demonstrated outside the courthouse in Al-Hoceima where a friend was being tried, but they stood apart on the pavement.) “We don’t want to get rid of the king,” said Jawad. “We just want one like they have in Spain or the Netherlands.” (In fact the monarch in the Netherlands has been Queen Beatrice since 1980.) They were prepared to keep the king as long as he “stops interfering in the economy” (meaning that his immense wealth — derived from the shares he automatically gets in big state companies — should be fairly distributed). They have all read at least extracts from LeRoi Prédateur (The Predator King) by Catherine Graciet and Eric Laurent (banned in Morocco but available on the internet), which exposes the financial affairs of the king and his entourage (1).

Every young Moroccan demanding change also wants another thing: a secular state. But what do they mean by that exactly? “We need to separate religion from civil liberties,” said Mohamed E, 24, an unemployed tourist guide. “Even being able to discuss a secular state without being called an atheist would be progress,” said Ahmed B, an unemployed graduate. So would a Moroccan be able to eat publicly in a restaurant during Ramadan? “Oh, no!” said Mohamed. “He could eat at home if he wanted to, but he should respect those who were observing Ramadan!” “But that would mean no change; that’s what happens at the moment,” Said A pointed out — he’d answered yes to the question.

The friends were from villages around Ait Bouayach (a district of 20,000 inhabitants) and all involved to some extent in M20F. They come from families of between five and eight children, and rely on their father’s income of 2,500-5,000 dirhams a month ($190-380), and on thawiza, a Berber word meaning family solidarity. Their mothers don’t work outside the home, and they never go out except to visit relations. “That’s normal here in the Rif,” said Ahmed, who claimed without irony that “it’s because for us the woman is a princess, a man’s most precious possession, so she mustn’t tire herself going out to work or shopping.”

Al-Hoceima is one of the dozen main centres of social protest, with demonstrations every Sunday for the last 18 months. The first, on 20 February 2011, was marked by an “accident”, which everyone blames on the police: the charred bodies of five young people were found inside a burned-out bank in the city centre. A few weeks later a Sufi-inspired Islamist movement that is tolerated but not recognised by the authorities, Al-Adl wal-Ihsan (Justice and Charity), led by Sheikh Yassine and his daughter Nadia, joined the protest. “In Tangiers we went from 20,000 to 200,000 overnight,” said Wadia, 32, a nurse from Tangiers visiting Al-Hoceima. “But although they brought reinforcements, they also brought problems. At meetings they insisted women wear a headscarf, and they didn’t want to protest during Ramadan.”

In December 2011 Sheikh Yassine decided to withdraw from M20F. “He didn’t give a valid reason, but everyone obeyed him anyway. Their departure damaged the movement in Tangiers. The only good thing was that meetings became a bit easier.” In Al-Hoceima, where Islamists are not part of the political scene as they are elsewhere in the country, the protest movement had run out of steam by summer 2011. Neither Al-Adl wal-Ihsan nor the Justice and Development Party (PJD) are popular here, even though the PJD leader, Abdelilah Benkirane, was appointed prime minister by the king in January 2012 (2). “People are very religious here, but it’s a traditional Islam without beards or full veils,” said Hocine M’Rabet, a town councillor in Ait Youssef Ali, near Al-Hoceima. “The Islamists have no control over them, because they regard the Arabic language as sacred, which doesn’t please the Berbers.” In the November 2011 elections the PJD failed to win a single seat in the Rif.

Protests resume

But an incident in August 2011 in Ait Bouayach revived the protest movement. Just before Ramadan, a divorced woman with four children who had been turned out of her home went to complain outside the office of the pasha (the state representative). Within a few hours the village square was full of people. “The M20F leaders played the Berber solidarity card against the pasha, who is an Arab appointed by the government in Rabat,” said Mohamed J, an unemployed graduate who has come back to live with his parents in Ait Bouayach. After a 12-day standoff, the woman was given somewhere to live. The movement then decided to campaign for the lowering of electricity bills, which can be as high as 800 dirhams a month for a family with an average monthly income of 3,500 dirhams.

On 3 October they occupied the National Electricity Office in Ait Bouayach. They pitched tents in the garden and prevented employees from reaching work, which meant no bills went out (“In the beginning the whole population supported us, it was great.”) The authorities did not respond directly. Then on 27 October, an M20F leader, Kamel Hassani, was stabbed by a mentally ill person popularly thought to have been manipulated by the police. The protestors demanded two years of free electricity. The pasha refused. Young people blocked the main road, and put pressure on shopkeepers to close during the demonstrations on Sunday afternoons, which is when shops do the most business. “We gradually lost public support,” said Mohamed J.

The crisis came on 7 March, when, in response to activists protesting inside the pasha’s office, the authorities in Rabat ordered the pasha to end the electricity office occupation. At 1.30am dozens of mobile intervention units swept through the village, chasing, beating and arresting anyone on the streets. The security forces combed the village for three days, and arrested half a dozen they considered to be the protest leaders. On 11 March the police moved to Imzouren, where 200 people were demonstrating peacefully in solidarity.

The pasha of Ait Bouayach, Mohamed Ayad, claimed to us that “the security forces used no violence on the 8 March”, “the police didn’t even use their truncheons” and “no one was injured”. When asked about the leaders of M20F who were arrested, he replied: “They were all criminals, wanted by the police for drug trafficking.” He also claimed the M20F “is mostly funded by foreign organisations — Spanish and Dutch — to destabilise Morocco.”

None of the people we spoke to had any faith in Benkirane’s government. “He was elected because he was the only one who hadn’t played the game (3). So he was the only one voters could have any confidence in at all,” said Mustapha, a topographical engineer we met with two of his friends. None of them were involved with M20F. “The truth is, he has no power: it’s all in the hands of the other [the king],” his friend Zakaria said. When asked whether the PJD would Islamicise government legislation, Mohamed, who works in Al-Hoceima’s tourism office, said: “If they were really Islamist they would ban the Mawazine festival (4), where you see lots of women singing half naked. But the festival is organised by Lalla Salma [the king’s wife]...” “You can’t really imagine Benkirane demanding that she cover her head,” said Mustapha.

‘Allah decides our destiny’

The prime minister did once refer to God, when on 14 May he told unemployed graduates demanding jobs in the civil service that since “only Allah decides our destiny” they should “speak to Him”. The remark made them furious. For 20 years they have tried to get jobs in the public sector, because the private sector has no union rights, health insurance or pensions, arbitrary dismissal, and lower salaries than the public sector. The only measure of the new government to catch the public’s interest has been the rise in the cost of petrol on 2 June, from 10.5 dirhams a litre to 12.5.

The police repression has not weakened the morale of the young people of Al-Hoceima. “I’m going to carry on taking part in demonstrations, but I won’t tell my parents,” said Mehdi A, 21, one of the ex-prisoners. “It’s not that they support the authorities, quite the opposite, but they are afraid. When I was in prison the police went to see them and told them that if I carried on, they would be arrested.”

They may want radical political change but they are deeply conservative. That afternoon, the sun was hot, the beaches packed, and the men were half naked, splashing about in the cool water, while the women sat on the hot sand watching, dressed head to foot in thick clothing. One of the radicals said it was their choice — “if they wanted to take their clothes off they could.” The fire brigade were called out three times in an hour to attend to women suffering from sunstroke.

(2) The PJD won the 25 November 2011 elections with 27% of the vote. (The turnout was 45%.)

(3) In 1998, a year before his death, King Hassan II announced there would be democratic change. He appointed Abderrahmane Youssoufi, leader of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, as prime minister. This former opposition party soon lost its credibility. Hassan’s son, Mohamed VI, has continued with this strategy, giving key posts to the leaders of all the parties, except — until January 2012 — the JDP.

(4) The 11th Mawazine world music festival took place in Rabat, 18-26 May 2012.